Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Appearances
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
We have to have an extremely high bar of evidence and proof to give a newborn baby something that they don't actively need when the risk is very, very low.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
So it's a great question. It's the most controversial vaccine, I would say, in terms of the timing in my office and the questions that I get. It's the most skipped vaccine, I would say, for individuals, probably any of all the vaccines because of things that you mentioned. So I would say the one thing you said that's incorrect is there isn't zero risk. It's just very, very, very low risk.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Right. It's not zero risk because the reason if you go back and you look at why they changed hepatitis B to give it to babies. So originally it was just given to high risk groups. So those that were sexually active, those that were older, those that were promiscuous, those kinds of things. And then they decided at whatever point that that wasn't good enough.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
There were still kids getting hepatitis B. And so they wanted more universal vaccination. So they give it to them at birth because you technically can get it from somebody who has hepatitis B if they bleed on you, if you're not aware. So the risk to a newborn
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
is basically zero if you don't have hepatitis B, if nobody in your house has hepatitis B, if you don't go around anybody with hepatitis B and you don't get bled on or something like that. So the risk is infinitely low, but you can have hepatitis B and not know it. So that's the theoretical concern. Nowadays we test.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Right, and that's the key factor there, right? That's the key question that has to be asked and has to be discussed and has to be debated because there isn't any question that the amount of hepatitis B, the rates have gone down because of universal vaccination. There are fewer people that have it. There are fewer people to pass it on.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
We don't see babies that get any more because kids get hepatitis B if they decide to do it. But the question is, at what cost? At what cost? And mainstream medicine media says, oh, there's no cost. Vaccines are perfect. They barely cause any issues. We have a few things that are kind of listed. Maybe it happens once in a million, but... Other than that, you're totally fine.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
And that just can't be totally true. We have to research things in a way to figure out what the actual long term effects are. And of course, there has to be some effect to some babies if you're giving a newborn baby something that changes up their immune system in some way. And how that affects you long-term, it's impossible to know because we don't study that. We don't study things in that way.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
If you look at the original hepatitis B vaccine studies, they studied them for safety for just a couple of days, like four or five days was the active studying. And so you can't really know all that much from that. There certainly have been follow-up studies that have looked at these things, but... How do you know what hepatitis B vaccine does to you 20 years later? Right. Like we just don't know.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
So I'm not saying that it isn't safe.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
We just don't know. And we have to have a extremely high bar of evidence and proof to give a newborn baby something that they don't actively need. when the risk, in my opinion, is very, very, very low, not zero, but very, very, very low. So to balance out that very low risk, you have to have a really high bar of safety.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
And when people talk about safety testing, that's what they're talking about is, do we have that robust level of data to confidently say that we we feel like the benefits outweigh the risks. And that's what we need so people can make an informed choice, right? It doesn't mean you shouldn't take it.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
It just means that you should be able to know the risks and the benefits so you can decide if it's right for you because you might want to protect your baby from hepatitis B. Yeah, well, I mean, I guess you would want to protect them if you were in a high-risk environment.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
So I don't ever talk about my own kids. I say in my office, in my office, people do all sorts of things. That's the most what I let them, you know, one day if they want to talk about it, they can talk about whatever they did or didn't do. But in my office, people do everything.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Some vaccinate, some don't. I would say the vast majority choose not to do that one because they've been tested and they decide to do it later if they're going to do vaccines.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
These are all their own chapters. We'll do each one. We'll do all three because they're all super interesting.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
or allergies. So number one, one of the big reasons why we need to talk about this is all the stuff that you just mentioned with chronic disease, because yes, it is very true that basically every chronic disease is increasing in kids, like 50% of kids or so have a chronic disease. Asthma rates have doubled or tripled. Allergy rates have doubled or tripled. Autism rates have gone through the roof.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
It was one in 150 in 2000 and now it's one in 36, one in 22 in California. So like those numbers have skyrocketed. One in 22? One in 22. In California? Yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Let's leave autism. We'll come back to it.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
People always want to talk about autism, so we'll do it. But yeah, let's start with aluminum. So that would be, I would say, the hottest topic in terms of the ingredients in vaccines right now. The issue. So aluminum, like you said, it's used to help stimulate the immune response. That's why it's there.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
If you don't stimulate the immune response for some of these vaccines, it doesn't give you as robust an immune response. It doesn't work that well. So that's why they have it in there. The research from mainstream is that it doesn't cause any negative side effects. They've done panels and groups and all the research overall shows that. So that's kind of the mainstream opinion on aluminum.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
You can. There's conflicts of interest in everything because the people that do a lot of the research are like the head of the CDC, vaccine safety. And if they find vaccine problems, they're probably not keeping their job very long. So there is inherent conflicts, not that they shouldn't do research, but that's the inherent conflict there.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
But if you look at the other metals, so start with lead, right? Lead was never in vaccines, but lead was totally fine for a long time, right? And then we started to learn more and know more and drop the amount that was okay. And now we say no lead is safe. Then you had mercury in vaccines. So you had thimerosal. That was one of the active ingredients.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Still never technically proven to cause an issue, but they pulled it out of vaccines anyways out of precaution because of all the controversy around 2000 around it. And so they pulled it out. So it was... So we have other...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
It's still in some vaccines, not the main ones. It's in the multi-dose flu because it is a really good preservative, so it helps kill the bacteria and the fungi. So that's why it's in there.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
It was never proven, air quotes, to be a problem, but they took it out in an abundance of caution because the concern was that you were getting more mercury in vaccines than was stated to be safe to get mercury from food. So they decided that in an abundance of caution, they would take it out, is what they say. So that happened. So now you have aluminum. That's the other thing that's in there.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
And they say that it's safe. But I guess the question is going to be over the next 10, 20 years, as we get more and more research and data, are we going to decide that it's not very safe? And you cannot possibly say that aluminum is totally safe because we have safety regulations on everything else. You have how much aluminum you can have in the air when you're working. You have...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
safety data from the EPA in water. You can have 0.2 milligrams in water in a liter, but you can have that much aluminum in a vaccine. So then they say, well, you're drinking water all the time versus a vaccine you're just getting every now and again. So once in a while is okay. And oh, by the way, we have lots of aluminum in
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
our food and you have aluminum in medications and that's a much, much higher dose. So the amount of aluminum you're getting from vaccines overall is still really, really, really low. So therefore, you know, we don't need to worry about it. And that's the rationale that they have. And it's true, it is much lower than you get in general, but it's not injecting it into you.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
So it's a little bit of a different mechanism.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
The data still shows that it doesn't cause any major concern. But the data is... done by the people that are looking into it. And when you, there is some research out there that looks at actually the aluminum in vaccines and the amount of aluminum vaccines isn't actually what it stated. Sometimes it's higher, sometimes it's lower. Now we have more and more vaccines.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
So I would say my opinion is it's not unreasonable to be concerned about it, right? I think that we should not feel bad or parents should not feel bad about being concerned that there is aluminum being injected into their child and that they would want more research and data to be done.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
to independently look at this, to have a better idea of what's going on, just like with mercury, just like with lead. I think we need a lot more information.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
I wouldn't force them to do anything. I mean, never do. We just have discussions around what that means and the risks about hepatitis B and if they're comfortable with that risk and that's what they're comfortable with. Just like anything else, if you're going to do surgery, you talk about the pros and the cons. Some people decide to do it. Some people don't. And I...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
I don't know why medicine has moved into this place where they feel like the doctor's opinion should replace the patient's. For whatever reason, medicine has moved to telling people what to do instead of teaching them, which doctor literally means doser, which is to teach, right? That's the meaning of the word. That's what it always was. And now we're telling people what to do and you should be
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
giving them the information so they can make the best choices for them. If you totally believe in vaccines, that's great. Convince the patient to do it based on information and data that's available. And if they decide to do it, do it and not, not, but we have very much moved into a place where it's my way or the highway and you're kicked out of the office if you don't do it.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
And that brings a lot of ethics and concerns that I think we're moving into.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
So going back, you know, I did all the regular medical training, went to a great allopathic program. And I would consider myself fairly Western at that time. Integrative medicine wasn't really even a part of the things that I thought of. I would have to credit the beginning of that journey to my now wife, who I met during residency. She was very holistic minded. And it started opening up my eyes.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
I think there is no question that our children's health is a disaster and moving in the wrong direction. And it's...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
infuriating as a pediatrician and a dad that we're not open to discussing everything and looking into everything and not coming in with our preconceived notions about things like vaccines or ingredients and vaccines because at the end of the day we all want the same thing we want healthy kids right right and we might not all agree on how to get there you might be the most pro vaccine person in the world and some might be totally anti-vaccine but that doesn't matter the question is what is actually creating
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Thank you. Thank you.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Thank you. Thank you.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
She's a lawyer, but she just grew up in a family that was more holistic minded. Okay. And so, you know, eating healthier food, being open to having discussions. I think that really just opened up my eyes to a world that I had never really thought of before. And then looking into functional medicine, going to some functional medicine courses and being like, okay. Like, why don't we think this way?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Thank you. Thank you.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Why don't we think about the root cause? Like, obviously we should be, there's nothing controversial about that. And so I started practicing integrated medicine and started learning about it. And I'm not against Western medicine at all. I just started to blend the best of both worlds together. And really seeing how interested people were in that, that just really led me down that path.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Thank you. Thank you.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
It's almost like vaccines are a crazier topic to talk about now than almost any topic we have to talk about this. Our kids deserve that. There's a lot of information that's just not true.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
But over time, I realized that the vast majority of people coming to my office had one major concern or question and it was around vaccines and wanting to discuss vaccines. I've never been against vaccines. I've always been pro choice and pro informed consent. And so I don't force anybody to do anything. I never have. And we have discussions in my office and
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
But I think it's important to be super precise because we want to be super precise with this because it matters if we want to move the conversation forward. And to move the conversation forward, the research has not been done on autism. You can't say that vaccines cause autism because you'd have to have the research to show that.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
We have not done that to be able to show that vaccines cause autism. So you can't say that. And I think personally, many things can cause autism or be related to autism. It's not just vaccines. I think they could potentially light a fire for some kids that are already there. Kids get it. Maybe it's something to do with birth defect or something in utero or environmental outcomes.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Parents continually come in crying from other places that they were kicked out or that they couldn't even have discussions about vaccines. Couldn't get their kids in the public school system.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
I think because we don't have a specific test for autism, it's probably many things. Many things can contribute. But when you talk about the research on autism, we are told over and over again, it's settled. And if you look at the research, it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
In my entire life, this is probably the most shocking thing I've ever seen because for this study, for this book, I wanted to go through the research and this is why medicine says autism is not caused by vaccines. It's very clear. There's so much evidence. Let me show you. Here's the other stuff, and so we should keep looking at this, but here is the evidence.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
When I started going through the research, and I have a master's in epidemiology, so I have done research in the past. I've actually done a literature review on body checking and hockey, Canadian, whatever. Yeah. So that's what I did. It was a body checking injuries in hockey.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
That was outside of the pediatric realm? Well, I did injuries. Yeah, we can talk about that at the end of the podcast if you're a hockey player. I have done research. I had a good idea. So I started going through the literature on PubMed. And I was shocked at what I was not finding. So that made no sense. So I started looking at the literature that existed. I started reading books.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
I read Paul Offit's book and Peter Hotez's book about autism. Because there has to be more. It doesn't exist. They've only studied MMR and thimerosal. Thimerosal research doesn't really matter anymore because it's not really in the vaccine. So you can throw all that stuff out. So that means they've just studied MMR. You get MMR when you're one. We have all sorts of other vaccines before then.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Or ostracized. So I just had to start learning more about it. And I started doing social media stuff as well, which, again, they don't teach you that stuff in medicine. And that started doing really well also. But most of the questions I was getting was around vaccines.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
They have not been studied ever. If it was done, Paul Offit would waive it. Everybody would wave it. They would say, it's insane. And you're saying that vaccines are proven. You cannot say that. You cannot say that it has been proven not to cause autism, or it does.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
I think for some kids it is. I think it's many things, but yes.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
There's no question. I mean, the reports, the studies, they show that they can cause encephalopathy and seizures, right?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Right. So if those things are possible, and if you look at the animal studies that have been done, there are changes to the brain in certain areas that affect similar things like you would see in autism. So obviously, an animal study is not the same as humans, but there is a biological plausibility there. But you have to study it to prove it.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
And the fact that we haven't actually studied it is very concerning to me. Because the question is why? It would not be very hard to use large databases to look at these things. I mean, we have the database.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
And I've seen so many, especially with RFK lately, so many things on the mainstream media saying like, It's proven. We know. There are hundreds of studies. No, there isn't. They have not read the literature. Because I never read the literature. I should have. But I was told this my whole life. So why would I look and spend weeks and months reading books to read the research?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
When you go read it, if doctors want to go read it, and they can if they disagree, send me the papers if you can find it. They don't exist, I promise you, because you can read Paul Offit's book and you can read Peter Hotez's book on autism and they don't have anything else. in there, except for basically MMR and thimerosal.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
So you can say with some general confidence that probably MMR itself is correlated with not causing autism, because there's a pretty good amount of studies in that. But that doesn't mean that vaccines
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
I wanted to talk about it and I talk about it in my office, but I felt really hindered from talking about it because it's so controversial. And it just got me more and more angry. But I went on all sorts of podcasts and shows and I never talked about it. I said, like, I will not talk about vaccines. I just can't. You know, it's going to get me in trouble.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
They're a lot. So maybe it's multiple in a row. Maybe it's multiple on one day. Maybe it's a specific ingredient in there. Maybe it's the combination of those things with a certain genetic makeup. I don't know. It may have nothing to do with vaccines. I don't know. But we should know.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
The CDC schedule is still the CDC schedule. So until something else is studied to make a recommendation above and beyond that, that is still the recommendation. I tell people they have to make that decision themselves because... Anything else than that would be giving medical advice, especially on a podcast, right? Yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
But I can't give medical advice to someone who's not my patient. Ah, okay. But even in my office, I still think that the research is missing to give the actual appropriate advice to be able to weigh the pros and the cons. So therefore, I can't...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
supersede my opinion over the family's opinion based on the fact that this is what I've read and this is what I think you should, because the evidence and the research and the guidelines are to do it based on that schedule. If you want to go outside of that, that is a personal choice with the way that you weigh the pros and the cons for those vaccines.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
And I think that we need to do that more so we can get the research because how do you know what the risk from a vaccine is unless it's studied in that way? And that's a huge part of the equation because there is no question based on the data that vaccines do a lot for some of those diseases. But the question is, what are the risks?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Right. I don't know if you know that RFK was talking about Guinea-Bissau in Africa, about the DPT vaccine. So the wholesale vaccine that we don't use anymore because of all the issues that it had, so it got taken off the market. It's still used by millions of people in Africa. And there was a really interesting that he mentioned that I never had heard of it. And then I went to look and it's true.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
But the kids that get the DPT vaccine, so they were checking them three month intervals when they were young. There was a five times higher rate of death in the kids that got the DPT vaccine.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Then the kids that didn't get it and they weren't dying from diphtheria, pertussis or tetanus. Those were fine, but they were dying of other things. And this has been studied multiple times by multiple different people. They're dying. So these are the kinds of questions we have to ask, like what else is happening?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Because if that increases your risk of X, Y, and Z, that might be worse than your risk of being able to get hepatitis B. I don't know.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
But it's almost like vaccines are a crazier topic to talk about now than most of the other things. It was censored heavier than almost any topic. I mean, you could say things that were true, and that's definitively proven now. Mark Zuckerberg said that. They were actively censoring true information because it would create hesitancy. And I saw that, and I do think that...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
So I agree with what you said. I am not an expert in that. I would say, I think that, you know, the research on the MRI vaccines is changing dramatically.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
so frequently and I certainly touch on the book a little bit but I don't get so into it because I think that needs its own library of books because it's so new and it keeps changing but from what I have read and from what I have seen the theory is that it's supposed to degrade really quickly that's not necessarily being found from some research and some studies and certainly they're finding it in places they didn't expect to find it and it's not degrading nearly as fast they're still finding it months years later so I do think that there is
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
a concern around the knowledge that we initially had about this platform versus what's actually occurring.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Over the last few years with the pandemic, people have started to realize that not everything we're told is completely true. They want more information. And I do think we're at a place now where it's not just mainstream media. All of the other medias are bigger than mainstream media.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
When you go through the pandemic, and one of the reasons and things that pushed me over the edge was just very obvious. What pushed you over the edge in terms of being willing and feeling like I need to start talking about this is the... The lies and the obvious, ridiculous things that were said during that time, they can't happen again.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Trust in medicine is gone because of the ridiculous things that were said that could possibly be true. So you look at the stats, like 70% plus people used 2020 were favorable for doctors and hospitals. Now it's under 40%. These are big polls. They're gone. And sadly, the doctors don't deserve that. No, doctors are good people. They're great people.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
But you can't take a profession and just keep forcing things on people without having discussions. And the ironic thing is all of this forcing is pushing people the other way. We have the highest amounts of exemptions, requests, lowest vaccine rates ever that we've had in modern history. So everything's going in the wrong direction. And when you say things with a new product like,
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
safe and effective. It's a ridiculous thing to say because you don't know that because it's new. You could say, reasonably, based on the research that we have so far, the benefits seem to outweigh the known risks in the short term. In the short term. We recommend it, but... And I'm not against even the EUA.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
And so if we're going to talk about vaccines or I'm going to talk about things, I don't need to go on mainstream media. That's fine.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
I'm not against creating a new product because you might need it and you might save your life. That's fine. The forcing and the gaslighting and the telling people that you require to do something, that's where we have a problem. That's what needs to be out of medicine.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
You don't need to force people to do things. You have to convince them to take it based on the research and the data. You convince them, you show them, you give them the information, you let them decide. If that was the case, I wouldn't have a problem with the vaccine. You can have it, you wanna take it, you think it saves your life, great, go for it. That's what it's there for.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
You wanna take hepatitis B vaccine.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
I don't have a problem doing it. I think we should. I think we should. And that's why I wrote the book in the first place now, because I believe that we have to talk about this. We have to talk about vaccines. Our kids deserve that. There's a lot of information that's just not true that's passed out there. And when you dive into the research, which I obviously know some stuff about vaccines.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
I think the most important place to start is in recognizing that we have to take health into our own hands. The establishment at this point, medicine, our organizations are not going to do that for us. We are seeing the trends go in this opposite direction. And it wasn't like this just 10, 20, 30 years ago. I mean, we're not...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
I'm not dying when we're 40, so not all of medicine and healthcare is bad. We have moved in a positive direction in general, but then we're seeing chronic disease rates skyrocket and we're seeing things go backwards now and life expectancy going down. So we have to find where in the middle, where is the balance? What are the things that we're not doing as well? And be a little humble with that.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
And I think that starts at home. It starts with the lifestyle. It starts with the basic things that we do, like the food that we're eating, the toxins that we're exposed to, making sure that we're getting sleep. I call it the seeds of health, those stress. environment and toxins exercise.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Mm-hmm. I'm a pediatrician, but you never learn about vaccine safety when you're going through med school. I looked into the research and there's a study from residency directors. So the heads of the residency programs in pediatrics, 70% of residency programs don't have vaccine safety. I never learned it. We learn about vaccines. We learn about the diseases, but you're not taught this stuff. So...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
covering the basis to raise yeah i think you started with some of them i mean i think food is the biggest key i think i would totally agree with that we have to realize that the vast majority of food even the best food is still sprayed in all sorts of chemicals and crap and so get the best possible food that you can as often as you're talking about organic organic whole foods but but locally grown know where it's grown from because even if you go
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
you have to do the best that you can within your means. I mean, I understand that sometimes things can be harder to get and more expensive, but ideally you get the best possible food that you can. Because if you go to even a good grocery store, think about when it was picked, right?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
It was picked in some other country, shipped across the whole world, sits in there for a few days, you get it, then you eat it a couple of days later. But if you pick something off of a tree, it lasts for like three days, right? So it's obviously sprayed in all sorts of crap, even if it's organic. So if you can, try to plant some things in your garden, try to go,
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
to farmer's markets and get things that are picked. Do you do that?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Yes, we go, I mean, as much as we can.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
We have some of our own food, but we go to places that, we go to the farmer's market and we go to a place that gets things shipped in from farmer's markets for most of our produce.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
We need to look at the balance of the pros and the cons on everything. And that's how you make decisions. And it doesn't seem like we're doing that.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
And luckily now you can order things. You can order boxes from places and you can have people ship stuff to you.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Well, I think that's very important what you mentioned with screen time. Number one, for the older kids, the average teenager now is on screen seven to nine hours a day, right? And younger kids are getting on screens more and more. And really, the biggest issue with screens is what you're not doing. So just like you said, you're not getting outside. You're not exploring. You're not in nature.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
You're not around other people. And that is devastating for so many reasons to our health. All of the research, anything I've ever seen, shows that the kids that start school later in other countries, they start at 7, 8, 9, they do better academically in the long run. We're not meant to sit in a classroom, certainly not when you're 3 or 4.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
You just accept it. Sometimes people want to put a nefarious motive on it. There's no nefarious motive. You're just taught that's what you do, so that's what you do when you don't think about it. And until you go look at the research, you don't really know anything different. And when you do... It blows your mind what is actually there.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
I understand people have to do it because they need daycare because they're working. I get it, but that's not the ideal scenario for a kid. They don't need to be learning that much when they're three. They just need to be playing, and we want them playing outside and moving and not being on screens. Not to say that you can never be on a screen. We all watched a little TV when we were younger.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
That's fine, but if you're plopping them in front of a screen all day, then what are you not doing? You can learn from a screen, but every study ever has showed that you don't learn as well from a screen as you do from people.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
I think one of the biggest things is to get off of social media. Don't let them watch the news all the time and don't let them get on social media until they're older. Minimize the screen time as much as you can for them.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
I think that we know at this point pretty clearly that social media is detrimental to our health and thankfully schools are starting to push back and some places are starting to say, okay, we're not going to have phones in school. And all of the data that's come back from that has been really excellent in terms of increasing focus and decreasing stress. So I think that is a big one.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Another huge one is just exercise. It's not rocket science, but our kids don't move anymore. And a lot of your stress reduction just comes from moving and moving things through and getting toxins out and just exercising. not thinking about things and having a good time. And we never had to think about that before. People just moved. I mean, you look at all the blue zones around the world.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
They don't do anything magical. They just move work. They just cook or they work in the farm. You see the grandmas working in the kitchen. They're 95. They got bigger muscles than me. What are they doing? They're just cooking.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
So we just have to get back to prioritizing that prioritizing family movement, getting outside, going for walks together, bring that back as a priority because our health is not a priority.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
it hasn't been for a while faster cheaper better became a priority especially in america and now we you know talk about oh it's it's classes to say you want to have healthy food or you know i'm too busy or i don't have enough money like those excuses have to go away we have to say this is our priority and i get it i understand that sometimes things can be more expensive or you can be busy but
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
We want to be healthy and what we're doing isn't working. If you want one out of two kids to have a chronic disease, keep doing what we're doing. But other than that, we have to change it. And it's not classist to say, I want everyone to have healthy food. Every kid deserves that. That is something that we should be making happen.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
And that may mean that we have to change some of the rules and the laws and the priorities and where the funding goes. Fine. But that has to be our priority. That shouldn't be something that a doctor can't say for fear of getting called ableist or whatever. It's like, look, this is what we have to do, how we get there. That's a bigger issue. But we just need to make that a priority.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
And if we do, then we can have healthier kids and you can have a healthier family. But start with your own family because it's not happening today. So we can start with the small changes.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
And so that is why I wanted to write the book, because I want to get out the information that I saw. And when you read the books that exist, they're very one sided.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
I think it means to live the most vibrant, healthy, happy life that you can live.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
You feel like you're in different worlds. If you read a book from somebody who is part of the CDC, then you have a very rose-colored view of vaccines. Everything's perfect. There are no bad studies. There are no problems with it. And then you read something on the other side and vaccines are the worst thing in the world and you should never take one ever in your life. Right.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
And there's nothing in between and there's nothing that has... something that RFK says right beside what Paul Offit says on the same topic. And you need that to be able to make decisions and we need to have debates and discussions about those topics and they've never happened.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
There is no question that our children's health is a disaster. It's infuriating as a pediatrician and a dad that we're not open to discussing everything and not coming in with our preconceived notions about things like vaccines because at the end of the day, we all want the same thing. We want healthy kids.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
You can ask me anything you want. Sway me, but I'll push you back. Don't worry.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
They have not gone through the best possible testing. Almost none of them have. So you have to be very specific.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
But you have to be very specific because people... twist and turn this. They have gone through a lot of testing, a lot of safety testing before they hit the market. It's not like they haven't done that. They have done placebo controlled trials. Absolutely they have. They haven't done inert placebo controlled trials. There is a big difference because
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
the vast majority of the research when it comes to vaccines has been studied against an active placebo. So what we want ideally is against salt water or water, right? Like something that actually won't have an effect. Most of the trials for vaccines are against another vaccine. So like the earlier version of it or the vaccine without the actual antigen in it.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
So like the MMR vaccine without the MMR part in it. That's what most of the trials have. And you go back in time. So you go back, you study one vaccine versus its earlier vaccine versus the earlier vaccine. And the first vaccine wasn't studied in the best way because it was maybe done 20, 30, 40 years ago. So it wasn't to the level that we did now.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
So you're saying something is safe based on something else. and it's not against nothing. And that's a big difference because you could say with a lot of the studies, well, the new MMR vaccine is not more dangerous than the old MMR vaccine, but that doesn't mean that the original MMR vaccine doesn't cause a third arm.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
Like if you're doing both and a bunch of people get a third arm, you can say, oh, it's just equally as safe. But if you did it against an inert placebo like saltwater, you might actually see a difference there. And maybe there is some sort of danger that you need to be
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
The most important place to start is...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
So that is true. And that's why a lot of vaccines have moved to the inactivated like polio, because the oral polio vaccine actually can give you polio. It happened. It doesn't happen very often. It's like one in a million or one in a few million. But it was causing more polio than polio was causing polio.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
So they got rid of it and they left just the inactivated polio. The problem with the inactivated vaccines over a live vaccine is they just don't work as well. They're not as effective. So you have to wait. They don't solicit as a robust response. Like the measles vaccine is a very good vaccine because it's a live. The live vaccines, they tend to give you a more robust response over your lifetime.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
137. Dr. Joel Gator Warsh: How Functional Medicine is Transforming Children's Health
The oral polio vaccine tends to work better. It's more efficacious than is the inactivated polio vaccine. So that's the tradeoff. that you get for those two vaccines. So it's a give and a take, but that's what we need to do. We need to look at the balance of the pros and the cons on everything. And that's how you make decisions. And it doesn't seem like we're doing that.